Tempting Gray - Untouchables 02 (23 page)

Dom spotted them and carried a crying Felicity
to the group. “What happened, is she hurt?” Vas asked.

Dom shook his head, looking grim. “No,” was all
he said.

“She’s dead. She’s gone!” she cried.

Lucas stiffened noticeably. “What did you say?”
he said harshly.

There was sympathy in his brother’s eyes for
Lucas. They might not know all the details but they’d all seen the way Lucas
looked at her. Something special had been there, a connection. Grayson knew
just how much those broken connections hurt.

“Let’s gather everyone and get out of here,”
Grayson said.

“Whom are we missing?” Dom asked, all business.

He did a quick count of heads. “The butler and
a bunch of our men.” He left out Felicity’s friend’s name. “I’m going to go get
Arabella, then we’ll pile into my SUV and get the hell out of here.”

He turned and headed for the stairs. When he
peered up the staircase, he jerked, then steeled himself.

A man held Arabella by the neck, Grayson’s own
gun pointed at her temple. Locked, loaded, with the safety off. She struggled,
fire in her eyes, nails digging into the man’s wrist. The man spotted Grayson
and dragged her to the balcony at the top of the staircase overlooking the
foyer. She spotted him and bared her teeth. She didn’t look scared, just angry.
Her courage and strength impressed him. She was growing stronger before his
very eyes it seemed.

“I shot him twice before he took the gun from
me.”

“Let her go,” Grayson said. A warning.

The man was dark-skinned with curly, black hair
and tall enough he’d have to duck to move through most doorways. He was cut
hard with muscle. The body of a trained a killer. One of Vincent’s best men
most likely. He fidgeted with something in his pocket and Grayson raised his
gun aiming it level between the man’s eyes.

The man laughed, seeing everything. “You pull
that trigger and I pull mine. She’ll be dead by time the bullet reaches me.”

His eye twitched.

The man, definitely vampire, pulled a piece of
metal out from his pocket. “This,” he said, grunting as he tried to hold a
struggling Arabella still while keeping the gun on her, “is a gift from Vincent
Donato and his sons.”

He pressed the object against Arabella’s neck.
Her body jolted as a piercing scream tore from her throat. She jerked and
fought, her skin no doubt burning from the silver. Grayson went into a rage. He
traced up the stairs in a blur of movement, knocking the man away with a vicious
backhand.

They grew locked in battle as the man charged
him. They crashed over the balcony railing. Arabella screamed. Others did too
as they crashed hard a story below. The floor caved in as it looked like a meteor
crashed into it.

The man hit him square across the face, loosening
teeth and scrambling his brain. But Grayson didn’t lose his focus. In fact, he’d
never remembered feeling so strongly focused in a fight before. Grayson reached
into the hidden sheathe beneath his jacket and pulled out his blade. It wasn’t
nearly as big as the knife he preferred. The blade he pulled out was thin and
meant for throwing. He took it and stabbed deep into the vampire’s belly whose
eyes flew wide in shock.

Arabella appeared behind him, his gun in her
hand. She was holding her neck but her aim stayed true. “Get off of him, you
piece of shit, before I pull this trigger and end you.” She spoke every word
with ferocity.

The man slowly backed away, climbing to his knees
and putting his hands in the air, panting. Grayson stood and took the gun from
Arabella. He couldn’t help but look at her neck where the skin was inflamed
red. He’d marked her with the Donato family seal. The silver had done its job
eating through her skin to leave an embedded tattoo of the Donato lion crest.

Silver never healed. The mark would forever be
burned into her skin.

She looked up at him, and of all the things she
could do, she smiled at him; a tremulous smile that warmed him from the inside
out.

He aimed and pulled the trigger, the gunshot
explosively loud. The man collapsed in a heap. To finish the job he’d have to
cut off the man’s head or cut out his heart. There were too many people around
for any of that.

Grayson ushered everyone out of the house, made
a call to TJ at work and told her to get a team out here now. They had some
bodies to take care of. As of right now, Blackmoore Estate was compromised.

Arabella finished scrawling on the piece of
paper and quickly folded it into a small, thick square and stuffed it in her
back pocket. Damn, her heart was racing. She felt like she was doing something
she ought not to be doing, such as rummaging through her dad’s personal
belongings as a kid. Yeah, it was the same awful feeling.

She returned to the bed and opened her duffle
when a deep male voice startled her. “Where are you going?”

Arabella spun around, clutching her heart to
keep it from jumping out of her chest. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You’re packing a bag, I see. Care to explain
why?”

While her face formed a perky smile her fingers
couldn’t stop twitching. “Yes, well, I can’t stay here now, right? There’s an
enormous chunk of the house missing. Bugs and animals can crawl in. It’s just
no good,” she joked. He didn’t smile or laugh which only made her more nervous.
Turning back around, she shoved the rest of her clothes and doo-dads into the
duffle.

“Like I said. Where are you going?”

“Home.”

He didn’t say anything for several minutes. The
whole time she could feel his presence at the door. She pretended she didn’t
care, that everything was all right, that a great woman named Beth wasn’t
murdered today; that none of this had happened.

She went to pack something else but realized
she had nothing. She’d brought very little with her and she’d leave with as
much. With little left to do and him blocking the door, she headed into the
bathroom and checked her reflection; the sight of the blistering red scar on
her neck made her flinch. It would never go away. The Donato family seal would
forever be on her neck.

“Fuckers…” she muttered, tenderly prodding the
area with her fingertips.

Grayson stepped into the bathroom instantly
making the space feel tiny when it was anything but. “That’s putting it mildly
I’d say. Let me look at it.”

Her breath caught as he closed in on her. He
turned her head gently to the side as he took a close look at the mark. “I want
to shoot him again.”

The sudden, surprising statement made her bark
with laughter. He didn’t look in the least like laughing. He looked rather
severe, actually. The next thing she knew, he pulled her into his arms in a
fierce embrace. She was helpless not to cling to him; thrilled that he was
alive and well.

“Nothing that’s happened changes what I said
earlier.”

She stiffened but he continued to hold her and
rub her back making her both tense but calm at the same time. She didn’t know
what to say. Didn’t know where things moved to from here. They weren’t in a
relationship and things were challenging to say the least. She could not think
of any reasonable answers to their problem.

She pulled back from the hug and kissed him
full on the mouth, unable to abstain from touching him. It was a deep, sweet
kiss that went on and on. It was the kind of kiss that made you forget time all
together. On a soft moan, she broke the connection. He needed to know. She had
to be brave and look him in the eyes and just say it. So she did.

“I love you. I do.” Her voice came out softer
than a whisper and uneven.

His dark gaze met hers. “Good, then you’re not
leaving.”

“Wait, what?” She drew back. Not quite the response
she’d been expecting. Could repeating it back to her really be so hard, she
thought?
Don’t be so petulant.

“We’re in this together now. I love you, you
love me. It’s done. I will take care of you and I can’t have you alone at your
house with Vincent out for blood. It isn’t safe.”

And this, she realized, was the crux of the
problem. “So, you’re still going after Vincent?”

His face tensed but he gave an affirmative nod.

She released the breath she’d been holding. “How
did I know you were going to say that?”

“It needs to be done. After this attack, here
at our family home, there’s no going back. Arabella, I’m finishing this one way
or the other and I need to know you’re safe.”

Nodding fast, she headed out of the bathroom
with him hot on her trail. “Fine, then you’ll do it without me. Besides, you
don’t have to worry. I’ll be on Zeke’s land. Even Vincent’s not getting past
the alpha and president of the council.” She grabbed her duffle and hefted it
over her shoulder. It weighed like a sack of bricks.

“Don’t leave me,” he said harshly.

The three brutal words stopped her in her
tracks. She spun around. “Grayson, I would do almost anything for you. But I
can’t stay here waiting to see if you come out of this dead or alive. You want
to find him?”

“You know I have to.”

She reached into her back pocket to the thick
piece of paper taking up space there. She pulled it out, hesitating for a lone
while, before tossing it on the bed. “It’s either him or me. In the meantime, I’ll
be going home to Sissy.”

At the bedroom door she paused, and found
herself turning around one more time to look at him. He was staring at her
severely as if unsure what to say or do. Much how she felt. She smiled at him.
She didn’t want to say goodbye; it sounded too final. So, instead she told him,
“Come back for me.”

And then she left him.

Arabella managed to finagle a car from the
Blackmoore residence. She let the guard, who called himself Graham and said he
worked with Grayson, drop her off at the front of the pack before the gates.
She passed by her own Were guards with a tired wave and felt her shoulders sag.
Whether they sagged from relief or despair she didn’t know. Her senses went on
alert. The scent of nature, of her people, and the distant howling of Weres was
like beautiful music to her ears bringing a smile to her face. It all made her
warm and fuzzy inside.

Without a vehicle, she trekked her way through
the pack. She passed people who’d never spoken to her before who now called out
to her like they spotted a celebrity. How strange to be recognized, stared at.
This must be similar to how it felt being Grayson, or any of the Blackmoores
really. When your name becomes famous that everyone recognized you, everyone
knew of you, and everyone gossiped. She supposed the case must be rather known
to people by now, especially with two dead Donato sons.

Her house, much like the healer’s, stood some
distance away from the rest of the pack. She had her own small, secluded home
with a dirt path to it. Rocks were kicked up and dust scattered as she walked
up the moonlit lane. Her shoes were covered in a heavy layer dust by time she
reached the house.

“Dammit.”

The lights weren’t on which meant Sissy wasn’t
home. The one time she really wished she was. Now she’d have to call her friend
and see if she could talk her into stopping whatever she was in the middle of
to come over. Because Arabella needed to talk to someone about all this chaos,
and it couldn’t be with Grayson. He was the cause of half of her problems right
now.

She unlocked the white, heavy front door and
stepped inside the house. A soft sigh escaped her. It smelled like vanilla
spice—one of the candles Sissy always lit when she came home.

Filing through the house, she dropped the
duffle and called out just in case she was here. “Sissy? Are you home?”

No answer. In the kitchen, she opened the
fridge, spied the milk and, feeling parched, poured herself a glass. Chugging
the milk, she stepped into the living room thinking to lounge on the couch and
watch mindless television,
anything
, to keep her mind off the death and
destruction of late. She switched the light on and the glass of milk slipped
from her hand as she jumped back. A terrified scream tore from her throat, though
she had no conscious memory of actually screaming.

“Sissy!”

Her friend lay on the ground, clothes ripped
into shreds, blood pooled from a hole in her chest. It spilled onto the floor, seeping
and soaking the rug around her in a morbid bath. Arabella rushed to her friend on
a hoarse cry.

“Sissy!”

Sissy’s head looked in her direction toward the
kitchen. Her eyelids were open, no color to her face. Arabella felt her throat
for a pulse. As she waited with her two fingers pressed to Sissy’s soft throat,
she started crying. They were horrible sobs that made her whole body shake.

So much death.

Her best friend. She loved her so much and she
was dead. Because of Arabella. Because she should have been kept safe.

She peered at the wound—a gaping hole in her
friend’s torso—and gagged as her stomach lurched violently like she’d been
punched in the gut by a giant. She jerked away, dry heaving next to a pool of
dark red blood.

They’d ripped her heart out.

Arabella’s skin prickled and she spun around,
backpedalling from the man in the doorway. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No,
no, no, no, no.”

He was still here. He’ll use me to hurt
Grayson. I can’t let that happen.

She didn’t have to ask who the man was. The resemblance
he held to Jericho and Domico was staggering. They both had the same androgynous
features, his father was perhaps more masculine having a slightly broader
forehead. Vincent Donato had wide, low-lidded, sad eyes deep-set in his slender
face. Black, almost feminine eyebrows formed crescents over his eyes, while his
narrow chin led up to a thin nose and a pouty mouth.

With a short haircut and a suit he could look
like a model for a catalogue; yet that same face with long hair and put in a
dress could pass for a beautiful woman any day. He would turns heads. He looked
like neither of those people though, but a mixture of both.

His hair was shorn in a straight line an inch
above his shoulders. He had thick, black hair that curled inward naturally. His
eyes were a chocolate brown that looked deceptively normal. He wore a brown
knit sweater, already covered in blood and slacks with shoes that shined.

“She died quickly.” His voice was gentle as if
he was sorry to tell her bad news. Odd, considering he’d ripped her heart out.

“W-where’s her heart?”

That somber gaze slid to Sissy before he said, “You
don’t really want to know that, Ms. Donahue.”

She looked around the room for a weapon while
trying to appear innocent. There wasn’t much that she could see, nothing silver
that could hurt him. He was a vampire which made him faster than her, and since
she couldn’t shift and run or fight, then she was at a severe disadvantage. The
lamp next to her didn’t look like it could take down Vincent Donato.

She should have sensed him, but remembering
what Jericho said, she knew the Donato’s family seal helped to disguise their presence
from others. Without warning, Arabella grabbed the lamp and threw it at
Vincent, then shot like a bullet across the living room for the kitchen. Her
breathing was erratic, panic at maximum levels. She felt like she was spiraling
out of control with nowhere to go but down. And who waited for her at the
bottom of hell but Vincent Donato, a murdering vampire psychopath.

She flew through the doorway into the kitchen,
and felt his presence following her like a stalker, as she rounded the island
and made for the garage where the side door was. But she never made it that
far.

Thin, strong wire forcefully caught her around
the throat, jerking her back into an impenetrable body. She choked as he pulled
the silver tether tighter. It burned and singed into her skin. Her feet kicked,
body jerking to throw him off, hands desperately clawing at his wrists, drawing
blood and skin beneath her fingernails.

Oxygen grew scarce. She gasped like a fish out
of water, mouth opening and closing. Each breath grew more and more labored. Her
vision grew fuzzy and black fogged the edges.

The fight was almost out of her. How easy it
was for him, she thought.

“Tell my sons when you see them that I love
them,” Vincent said softly.

“
Keck! Hhnng!
” she choked. If she could
speak, she would have been saying
fuck you
.

The wire burned its way deeper, penetrating
past the skin as he pulled it tighter, cutting into blood vessels and arteries.
He could have ended her life already but she could feel his adrenaline rushing
and the pleasure he took from this; it thrummed in the energy around him. This
gruesome act fueled him in a terrible way.

Warm blood dripped down her neck. Funny how it
felt like sweat even though it wasn’t.

What happened next must have started Vincent
too, for he stilled. Someone knocked on the front door—three solid, loud
knocks.

Vincent gingerly positioned her so she faced
the front door in the hallway from the kitchen. He squeezed tighter and she
held his wrists with her nails trying to make him ease up the pressure.

Knock, knock, knock.

The front door shot open and Arabella couldn’t
hide her surprise. He’d come here after her.

Grayson stood in the front door. If he was
surprised to see Vincent there with a garrote around her neck, he didn’t let
on. Smart man. He stepped inside, keeping his movements casual and slow. He
shut the door, enclosing them all. His eyes met hers, noted the garrote
embedded in her neck—which hurt more than she cared to admit—then darted left
to spot Sissy on the living room floor, before returning to Vincent.